Greedy Goblin

Monday, November 8, 2010

Cataclysm preparation #2

Soon every living body in Azeroth will invade Vashj'ir and Mount Hyjal looking for "fun lolz", "pwn som nub" on PvP servers and of course to "lvl up for 1337 epixx lol". Of course there will be intelligent players who'll know that the "kill named enemy" quest can be completed by the whole group, you don't have to spam AoE at the spot littered by a dozen of his corpses to tag him before others. But they will be a minority. I wish I could give you the advice "level in your own pace, enjoy the scenery, read the quests" but you can only do it months after the Cataclysm, when all the M&S are spamming "gogogo" and "heal ffs" in heroics.

However you can quickly outgrow this mess and stay ahead of the wave, arriving to Deepholm. The quests there require lvl 82, so once you reached that level, you can leave the swarm and move there just like you could do with Dragonblight in WotLK. You can get to Deepholm starting the questline Hero's call: Deepholm / Warchief's call: Deepholm. But first thing first: lvl 82. A simple trick helps you to get there faster:

Just don't forget to place your HS to Stormwind/Orgrimmar, before you lay to rest in Dalaran at Dec 6. The portals won't be there when you wake up. So just fly a circle in Storm peaks and Icecrown, net 25*20K = 500K XP, press your HS and you can go to the questgiver bulletin.

One more tip: /who the two zones (Vashij'ir and Mount Hyjal) and choose the less populated. Don't forget to do it on the opposing faction, especially in PvP server, and if it shows 49 players, pick some classes (/who mage vashij'ir).

PS: many commenter say that the vial of poison does not give XP in Beta, so don't collect this quest.----------------

35 comments:

You make it sound like 500k XP will be enough to go directly to Deepholm. However, on the beta servers, you require 1700k to reach level 81 starting from level 80. While I agree that a log full of completed quests will be a nice kick-start, it's not going to let you completely bypass the clusterhump that is the first few weeks of the expansion in the "newbie" zones.

I understand that's what quite a lot of people are doing. You can probably trim your timing down by that much more by keeping only quests in Icecrown - there should be more than enough there to hit 25/25. Better if you can save your sealed vial of poison for your 26th quest, since you won't have that many dailies anyway.

Or, seeing as you're avoiding the rush and playing in the down period, it'll only save you half an hour, at best. You could just wake up half an hour earlier.

Have to say that, despite getting those 500k XP sounds good, you might be able to do the same in half the time with Cata quests.Have been playing the beta for a while and looks like any way to make XP is a good one, either by questing or dungeoning, even skilling up archeology will grant you around 1 level every 2-3 hours.

Dungeoning seems a pretty suitable way if you want to avoid M&S. With the new guild changes it's very reasonable to get a guild group doing this, you get most of the quests as soon as you enter the dungeon and, the other big advantage, you can easily acquire new equipment perfectly itemized for the new content.

Dungeoning, here's the real hope for better gaming experiences. I'm doing some heroics now on beta, most of the DPS is around 8-9k, sometimes 10k, rarely above 12k. I think that most is due to the fact that fights are really different, with a lot of CC, target switching and "STAY OUT OF FIRES" situations, even on trash mobs.Heroic bosses have around 5M hit points, sometimes more, which means that using the brain and coordinating actions with the other are the very basic to complete a run.Many bosses are much harder that what ICC can provide now (same average DPS, same bosses hit point, a lot more movement in fights). We manage to complete all the runs with guild mates, if choosing to pug them randomly I rarely go beyond a couple of bosses.

Cata heroics will be a huge filter to keep M&S out of the game (hopefully, and hopefully they will not nerf the encounters, some have been already...)

Your doing what I was doing, I have been stacking my quest log with end chain quests though that give 30k exp. Didnt know about the portals being removed, so ty for that tip. I planned to actually DO the dailies though. Ie log into wow, hand in 25 quests in northrend, hammer 20 dailies then from my exp to level add on, apparantly I need 1730 cult of the dammed/converted heros to ding. I figure that will be around 5-800 by the time I have done my quests. I can do that in a 2-3hr grind with my turtle easily enough then at lev 81 I will head out. That extra level that I will have in the first morning of the expansion will be my edge.

/who only shows 49 players, so I bet that in both cases (in four cases if you check opposite faction) you will see 49 people per zone in the first few hours after Cataclysm arrives and until several weeks later. I remember having an addon that showed how many people there are in General and Local Defense channels. That number is more close to the truth than /who since almost everyone is in those channels and never leaves them.

In icecrown there are some Group-dailyquests, these should fit better than the normal dailys (more xp). Also there are some questlines that end into some very profitable groupquests which you can easily do in t9+ equip (also more xp and not depending on any other player).

I personally prefer to start at 0:00 if possible (digital download already done) and gather up my old arena-companions to have a fast rampage.

Thats the plan for my DK, my personal favorite charakter (paladin) will be leveled some weeks after the cataclysm. I think only rushing in front of the great mass will kill some of the great impressions from the new design. I hope to compensate it that way.

@Gevlon: I agree, that this method will give you a nice XP-advantage over most of the others. However, you should also consider that it may be better to complete the first few quest-chains fast to get ahead of the crowd. If you start a bit late it may also happen that the quests will take significantly longer due to the mass of people that also want to complete them.I'm not saying this is the case, this highly depends on your server. Just a thought.

@madgus: "even skilling up archeology will grant you around 1 level every 2-3 hours."

I was wondering, whether this will also be the case for live servers. I've seen the video from Totalbiscuit ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slg9rjHAqNo) where each find awarded about 121k XP at level 84. In my opinion it's not certain, that this will remain at such a high level. Or are there already some statements regarding this?

I just wonder what kind of advantage will 500K XP give you over M&S? You will it will not get you even to a third of a bar (and XP on BETA may be different from XP). Because quest zones in Cataclysm are heavily phased (think Icecrown), you will have to start at the "beginning" of the new zones anyway. I am not saying 500K XP is not nice to begin with, I just miss the point. My inner feeling tells me that you would get those 500K in much less time in Cataclysm than by doing 25 Icecrown/Storm Peaks dailies.

I must play on a deserted realm since even playing during the morning of wotlk release wasn't such a bad experience (mob camping and so on).

Another problem is that my main is a loremaster and so my only option for some xp hoarding are dailies.

Anyone on beta tested if heirloom items work at lvl 80? (I know they shouldn't scale past that, but I'm not sure about how the extra xp is going to work with current boa gear) if yes that's an easy 100k xp right there for the same 25 quests. :)

Well, not sure about it, but I can see my newer miner (still at level 71) getting 2.5k-3k XP for every mined node.Gathering profs giving you XP was actually announced (if I'm not wrong) as an incoming Cata change, then applied beforehands. Archeology is not live yet, thou, but I don't see it changing too much in Cata, I think the new profession will grant reasonable amount of XP, as mining is already doing now for my miner in WotLK.

Moreover, there's no way for other players to interfere with you while leveling it.A downside of it, though, is that if you focus too much on it you may find yourself at lvl85 while wearing Northrend stuff, and based on my experience on Beta it is not so good (HP wise everybody will be above or close to the 100k mark at lvl85).

I wouldn't judge leveling progress based on the beta/test servers, as they might change the numbers several times for the sake of testing things. I'd be surprised if the experience required to get to 81 is only 1.7 million, as that is not much different from current leveling rates (faster, really, given that there are half as many levels this time). If that doesn't change, then you can level to 81 in Northrend without much difference from the new zones.

A 500k head start is nice under any circumstance, but I expect that you'll have to hit the new zones right after, and then you hit the wall of players rushing to level.

I too, had this idea of filling the questlog up to the brim with dailies or lvl 80 group-quests.

For those who are interested in the maximum exp you can make this way with 25 quests, it's about 900k.This, certainly, is only possible when you haven't touched Storm Peaks and Icecrown yet and are willing to go to some extent for quests like the Malygos Keys and the Quel'dalar chain. You also have to wear heirloom shoulder- and chestpiece at the time you turn them in. As long as you are still lvl 80 the exp multiplier remains active.

There may be other quests that net more raw exp, Wowhead seems to have a problem filtering quests with more than 40k exp.

Icecrown:

Light Within the DarknessTirion's GambitMind TricksPutting the Hertz: The Valley of Lost Hope (Daily)Revenge for the VargulBattle at Valhalas: Final ChallengeThe Fate of BloodbaneCoprous the DefiledNeutralizing the Plague (Daily)No Rest For The Wicked (Daily)Shatter the ShardsThe Guardians of Corp'retharThe Flesh Giant ChampionThe Admiral Revealed4 random lvl 80 dailies in Icecrown

The Key to the Focusing IrisThe Heroic Key to the Focusing IrisA Victory For The Silver Covenant

If I'm not mistaken, it should be possible to have all these quests active at the same time. For Horde side you may have to change some quests to their counterpart. There may be more potential if you also use lvl 80 dungeon quests, but most people will have them completed already. The downside from this list is, that you have to fly around for quite some time to turn them all in.

For people like me, who have done every possible quest already, it might be useful to go for the fastest time when considering what daily quests you choose. In my earlier attempts I was able to hand in 25 dailies in 4-5 minutes. Although this “only” nets about 700k exp, you might be fast enough to catch the first boat to Vashj’ir when you start at 0.01am, as the event at the docks, preceding the ride, takes quite some time.

Ps. You shouldn’t use the Sealed Vial of Poison quest, as it does not give any exp. This was changed some time ago on beta, as people startet to collect huge amounts of Waterlogged Recipes and Sealed Vials of Poison on live servers.

Astoundingly, this was a tip I hadn't even considered. So, thanks for that. You also mentioned in your first cataclysm preparation post that it was a perfectly viable strategy to fall behind the wave as well. This is probably what I will do. I'm currently leveling a druid as I'm considering making it my main for cataclysm. I expect to be hitting Outlands around the time that Cataclysm hits. If ever there will be a time when that place will be deserted and easy to level in, it will be in those first couple of weeks.

I'm pretty sure any quests marked as "complete" are dropped when Cataclysm hits. At least, this was my experience in playing around in the beta: Quests that were in progress remained in my log after the transfer but quests I already had completed were gone. This seems in-line with Blizzard's philosophy of using expansions as a "fresh start" for everyone (and explains why there's a the gear reset as early as level 81).

@Fliparto:Since you can level with the BC blue (daily) quests it is quite logic that wotlk blue (daily) quests will give you xp. Never heard of an upcoming change here... ...would be quite senseless too... ...and yes it works on beta...

Unless that's the first time you complete the quests, their XP will be nerfed in Cataclysm.

My tactic will simply be rushing to the first zone as soon as possible when servers open and try to outrun the competition, even if logging out inside Blackrock Mountain might be more efficient because you could almost instantly queue for the first dungeon. Combination of guild group and dungeon finder should be some great XP, but I want to experience the expansion day chaos.

I don't really see this as useful unless your goal is just to hit 85 as soon as possible. The biggest questing bottlenecks tend to be right at the start of the zone and you're not avoiding that without grinding the entire way. You'd mostly be skipping the end of zone quests which tend to be the best ones in terms of reward and interest, plus most players would be decently spread out by then.

I think with WotLK they also adjusted the spawn rate to correspond with people in the zone. I joined late, but supposedly people died frequently just because of the volume of things respawning under them on high population servers.

Though I was personally planning to ride out the initial week or two of rush by playing out the worgan or goblin starter zones which look to be heavily scripted/phased.

I thought that in the past, Blizzard made it so that XP from quests are calculated when you pick up the quest, not when you turn it in. So your quest won't give XP since you picked it up at level 80, when you can't gain XP.

Hi there guys,don´t forget about the reputation you loose skipping those starting areas, reputation that can come quite handy if content and itemization is going to be as hard as some tell at early 85. It could be a pain farming quests at 85 to get exalted even with superior gear.

Anyway, 500k xp seems really juicy given the fact that we cannot do much more right now. Be carefull, I've read some posts here and there claiming that quests logs would be reset ¿Anyone knows something about this?